The Terrible Truth About Fear
It has to be said straight up – it’s self-imposed. We do it to ourselves. A controversial statement, yes, but true nevertheless. Some of it comes from the auto-responses associated with staying alive, but some/most/lots of it is learned. Either through community or cultural practices or training or … you name it – if there’s a way to teach a person to fear, humans know how to do it.
Do any of the following sound familiar?
The boogey-man’ll get ya!
I’ll tell your [you know: ma, pa, cops, baddy, etc.]!
If you go out into the [dark, woods, night, city, etc.] it’s your own fault if something [said very deep, with the head lowered at a slant and the hand wrapped around the throat] happens!
It’s the way it’s always been [this is one of the worst ones, to my mind – manipulation into a bad situation because it’s always been that way – pphhhhfffffttttts].
I don’t know who you think you are, that you can do things differently to …
It’s my roof!
You won’t get anywhere in this life without me/my help etc. [yes, this instils fear – think about it: will you ever be able to get away from this situation without them? If they tell you often enough that their truth is the only truth, will you believe it? Of course you will. The only thing stronger than that fear is the need to stay alive, regardless of the cost – and can you therefore run away from it! and into the darkness of the unknown?]
There’s always a price to pay, kid!
Someone always sees/watches/knows.
I’m watchin’ ya, kid.
Those people eat babies! [look at the propaganda of WWI and WWII- our governments did that!]
If you let them in [head shakes, mouth opens as they look surreptitiously behind them] … you’ll never get rid of them/they’ll take our jobs/they’ll change our world etc., etc., etc.,
There are a lot more of these little wordages – every culture and community has their own version of the same things. It’s called protectionism of the group. It used to be necessary when we were small groups in a big world. The problem is severe now because we [human beings] occupy so much more space than we used to; we move around and intermingle with other races and cultures; we see them all the time on a variety of media [and what is media most fond of showing us?].
For some, this intermingling is an enlightening thing. For others, it is fearful. Why is it fearful? Because we are trained, through tens of thousands of years, to fear the unknown, the protect our own from the invader, to be fearful of the unknown.
And it goes on. The fear adages may have changed to take account of the current state of the world community and all the sub-communities – but the fear remains the same.
Unfortunately, we have allowed the fear-mongers to have the biggest say. We vote them in or support their ideologies or rally behind them when we think what they’re doing is protecting us.
If we looked closer, more carefully, we’d see they are only protecting their own arse, and if the proverbial hits the fan, we’d be left to cop it while they swan off with wise words and platitudes that sound a lot like the lines above: ‘You should have know this would happen if …’ blah, blah, blah.
Don’t be one of the people who believes we can’t change from what we were; don’t be the person who condemns without knowledge.
If I am a black person, will you like me? If I am a black person, will you hate me? Why?
If I am a non-specific racial profile, will you like me or turn your back to ignore what you don’t know?
The choice is yours, and your mind is yours. Look in the mirror and see what you think of yourself, how the fear-training has affected how you live your life and how it affects how you interact with others in your community (physical and otherwise).
Over to you. Check your DNA to find out just how many different ‘peoples’ you come from.
